One Hundred Years Olds, and Still Young at Heart

The Town of Olds will have a double dose of centennial fever in 2005. The south-central Alberta community was officially incorporated in 1905, the same year as the Province of Alberta.

Just 20 years earlier, the area around Olds was a bald, windswept prairie. There was hardly a tree to be seen, except for a giant pine and two large poplar companions that were prominent on the horizon to the northeast. The trees became landmarks on the wagon and stagecoach trail between Calgary and Edmonton, and the area was known for a time as Lone Pine.

While Edmonton and northern communities, served by navigable rivers, had attracted fur traders in the late 1700s, southern Alberta had to wait for the arrival of the Canadian Pacific Railway at Calgary in 1883 for active settlement to begin. The first sodbusters homesteaded about 10 miles north of Olds in 1885.

Settlement on the future Olds town site began in 1890, at the location of Siding No. 6 on the Calgary and Edmonton (C&E) Railway. The C&E sent its first train north to South Edmonton in 1891. By 1904, the hamlet that grew up around the railway station and Siding No. 6 boasted a population of 100. It was registered and incorporated as a village of the Northwest Territories in 1897, and became one of the first incorporated towns in the new Province of Alberta in 1905. It was named for George Olds, a CPR traffic manager.

Hay was a valuable commodity when horses were the main mode of transportation. The community that came to be known as Olds was identified for a time by the informal name of Hay City, in recognition of its importance as a source of hay for communities served by the CPR. Agriculture remains an important pillar of the Olds economy and lifestyle, but the community has diversified with light industry, tourism and an important oil and gas sector.

Olds College has been an integral part of Olds since 1913, and has expanded from its original mandate of teaching agriculture and home economics to offering programs in horticulture, land management, animal sciences, applied business, fashion, mechanics and academic upgrading. The College now offers two applied degree programs and many diploma and certificate level programs. Recent additions include the Olds College Centre for Innovation, which works closely with government and industry partners in applied research, and product and business development; and the new Botanic Gardens, phase II of which was officially opened to the public by Lieutenant-Governor Lois Hole in July 2002.

Within comfortable driving distance of Calgary, Red Deer and the recreational areas of the Rocky Mountain foothills, Olds can offer its residents another hundred years of access to the best of rural, urban and outdoor amenities.

For information and updates about community events and activities for the Olds and Alberta centennials, visit www.town.olds.ab.ca frequently.